Femtosecond determination of optical nonlinearities in CdS, GaP, ZnO, ZnS, ZnSe and ZnTe

Nonlinear reaction in semiconductors has received much attention recently, partially due to its potential in applications such as optical switching, amplification, and limiting. We report a method to unambiguously determine these three effects, by using the single beam Z-scan technique and single color time-resolved Z-scan technique with a femtosecond laser.